Open Meta-search with OpenSearch: A Case Study

Abstract : The goal of this project was to demonstrate the possibilities of open source search engine and aggregation technology in a Web environment by building a meta-search engine which employs free open search engines and open protocols. In contrast many meta-search engines on the Internet use proprietary search systems. The search engines employed in this case study are all based on the OpenSearch protocol. OpenSearch-compliant systems support XML technologies such as RSS and Atom for aggregation and distribution. The meta-search engine itself combines the ranked lists of the chosen search sources based on user-supplied weightings. This is implemented in Lucene, a free open source information retrieval library.